Everyday Fitness Standards

Folks love standards, mostly because we love to compare ourselves to other people and see where we lie on the continuum. It validates us. It gives our ego this little tiny boost that makes us feel good for a minute.

And usually, I’d write a post telling you to forget about standards. Forget what other people are doing. Get off of Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Stop watching other people live life and giving yourself massive FOMO while you sit on your couch with re-runs of The Office in the background.

But I think standards can be helpful now and then. They give us metrics to compare ourselves to ourselves, to see how we’re doing. We can pit our strengths against our weaknesses and uncover the areas of our health & fitness that we need to work on.

I actually get this question a lot, “Like, okay, where should I be? What should I be able to do? How much should I be lifting?” And truthfully, I don’t have an exact answer. It’s really up to you. It depends on your lifestyle and your goals and a multitude of other things.

I guess if I was going to sum it up, it would sound like this: we strive to bring all of our members to a place of strength and conditioning where they’re never precluded from performing any activities or tasks, recreational or otherwise, for lack of physical fitness.

I don’t have all the answers. All I have are about 10 years of practical experience with myself, my clients, and now my members.

I’m not an M.D., so this post won’t cover things like blood glucose, cholesterol, or blood pressure. What we will cover is your strength, both bodyweight & absolute, as well as your cardiovascular ability. I’m going to put forth two categories for each exercise or test: Satisfactory and Great. If you’re in the Satisfactory category, good, you’ve achieved a base level of fitness that will most likely allow you do perform any and all activities that you’d ever want to do.

But if you’re looking, as a casual gym-goer, for a little bit of a challenge, feel free to reach for greatness. These are standards that will provoke questions from your friends & family like, “What have you been doing in the gym recently?” and “Wow, that [insert feat here] was amazing!”

Are you ready?

Barbell Tests

We’ll start with the barbell because that seems to me to be the most obvious place to begin.

You’ll notice that there are different standards for women regarding upper-body-dominant movements. This is due to obvious differences in upper body musculature and the differences are negligible (if they even exist at all) when it comes to lower body movements.

In fact, a 1x bodyweight squat, bench press, and deadlift are all part of our Bodyweight Challenge here at the gym and only three folks have been able to complete it. But that provides a nice segue into our next section.

Bodyweight Movements

Great Chinups: 10 reps for men, 5 reps for women

Satisfactory Chinups: 5 reps for men, 1 rep for women

Great Pushups: 20 reps for men, 10 reps for women

Satisfactory Pushups: 10 reps for men, 5 reps for women

Great Plank: 2 minutes total

Satisfactory Plank: 1 minute total

You should also be able to complete 10 inverted rows from a completely horizontal position, as well as at least 10 bodyweight split squats on each side (and probably more). Bodyweight exercises are one of our best tests of body composition. It’s pretty difficult to perform any amount of chinups when you’re carrying a spare donut (or a few donuts) around your mid-section.

And now that we’ve brought up your nagging insecurities over those few extra pounds, let’s dive into the section on cardio standards!

Cardiovascular Tests

Great 2000m row: 8:00 for men, 10:00 for women

Satisfactory 2000m row: 10:00 for men, 12:00 for women

Great 500m row: 1:45 for men, 2:00 for women

Satisfactory 500m row: 2:00 for men, 2:30 for women

Great 1-mile run: 8:00 minutes for men, 10:00 for women

Satisfactory 1-mile run: 10:00 for men, 12:00 for women

Great 10-minute Assault Bike: 3.5 miles for men, 3.0 miles for women

Satisfactory 10-minute Assault Bike: 3.0 miles for men, 2.0 miles for women

And even sometimes, folks can power through some of these “shorter” cardiovascular efforts with no real cardiovascular endurance at all. Cardiovascular health encompasses a wide range of abilities and it would be impossible to include all of them on here.

A great test of your cardiovascular health is your resting heart rate. A “normal” resting heart rate (RHR) is said to be somewhere in the range of 60-100 beats per minute (bpm). High-capacity endurance athletes, on the other hand, usually have RHR’s of 30-50 bpm. So where should you fall?

Great resting heart rate: Less than 60 bpm

Satisfactory resting heart rate: 60-70 bpm

If your resting heart rate is in the 80s, 90s, or higher, you definitely want to think about working on your cardiovascular endurance a bit. Resting heart rate is more than just a stat, fewer beats each minute means less stress to your arterial walls and to your cardiovascular system as a whole. Don’t worry though, a few days of low-intensity steady state cardio on the order of 20-30 minutes should be enough to bring your resting heart rate down (when combined with an intelligently-designed strength program).

And there are a few more things should be in the back of your mind. We do take and record circumference measurements at our gym (e.g. arm, waist, hip, and thigh). But if you’re looking for something a little bit simpler, here’s a guideline: your waist circumference should be around half of your height, both in inches. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Flexibility-wise, you should be able to perform a near-perfect back-to-wall shoulder flexion test, as well as a fairly deep unassisted squat. Both of these things tell us that your core is firing on all cylinders. They also let us know that your hips, ankles, & shoulders are free of mobility issues.

Phew, okay, that was a lot of stuff.

Look, it’s not my job to tell you what you should be capable of. Only you can determine where you need to be fitness-wise. But these should serve as some basic guidelines to get you started. Achieving these primary goals will help you become a well-rounded, strong, athletic human being who’s never precluded from performing any activities or tasks, recreational or otherwise, for lack of physical fitness.